Paper, An Anthropologic Touring of the TM Story in Fairfield, Iowa
Doug Hamilton
Abstract:
Like with the settlement of other American utopian spiritual regeneration practice movements, such as from the core group of the Mayflower "Combination" and on down through 19th-century communes the Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice movement attracted cross sections of socioeconomic participants.
By Doug Hamilton
In the decade of 1970 to 1980 a million Americans learned Transcendental Meditation. At the time this was about 1 in 300+ Americans.
In November 2024 a retired career professor of anthropology who lives on the East Coast visited Fairfield, Iowa. This professor had not really heard of Fairfield, Iowa and knew very little about TM before coming to Fairfield.
At a point during their visit I offered to give this anthropology professor a driving tour through the story of the TM community in Fairfield.
I enjoy giving these tours of this utopian story to 'outsiders'. On this particular driving tour a throughline thread shared within the tour for this 'anthropologist' was how meditators from their earliest arrival in Fairfield, originally to occupy a newly purchased college campus, settled living in housing in concentric neighborhoods that developed in sequence of time through different decades of the last 50 years. The pattern reflects distinct waves of growth, socioeconomic, and cultural practice.
In 1974 at first arrival, the move of a university faculty, staff and students to Fairfield from California was focused to settle, occupying and operationalizing an empty recently purchased bankrupt college campus.
In the first few years after initial settlement a few individual homes were purchased by members of the meditating community in town often in the nearby neighborhood south of campus.
In 1978 at a large assembly of meditators held at University of Amherst a solicitation was made for meditators to move to Fairfield, Iowa then with a mission that large-scale daily group meditations would be had.
From this Amherst Assembly invitation, two groups came more immediately to the call: First, those with so much wealth this was another place to have house. A second group who had no life obligations otherwise that could keep them from coming and even much wealth came more immediately also.
The Construction of two large golden domes to house the group meditation practice followed in time. Within a decade of the first arrival of meditators on campus to Fairfield an off-campus socioeconomic middle-class began to surface living in town and in the surrounding County area.
The Tour:
I like to begin tours of the story for outsiders at the Fairfield town square on the corner where Paradiso Cafe now stands. From there driving north on Main Street past the County CourtHouse and the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center, continuing North through the nearby town neighborhood of old small framed houses that are north of the railroad tracks, to come to the south edge of the old Parsons College campus. Then skirting around on the road passing by the brick Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment (MSAE) built by the meditating community, and then entering what was the old Parsons College campus through the main gate off the Highway to survey the central campus with its large academic buildings - finding some old buildings are nicely renovated and many other large academic buildings newly built atop the bones of the original Parsons architecture.
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On the tour each visitor in their turn takes in the evidently enormous capital $ investment that has been made on the campus in the scale of the several large newer academic buildings on and across the old campus.
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Then continuing driving back out to Hwy 1 north along campus buildings and turning off the highway at the entrance for the Golden Domes. Then transversing campus eventually over to a line of old dormitory 'Frats', Utopia 'Trailer' Park, and then along to a row of large homes built on the east side of campus-- built by some of the early and wealthiest MIU donors.
Campus street signs and building names along the way bare names of earlier MIU Trustees with family names like Granville, Guild, Dimick, Drier, Zimmerman and others —some who came as founders from the Black Mountain community. These individuals, from older generations, arrived alongside the first wave of 1970s students.
Driving out the back side of campus on to B Street introduces large pre-Sthapatya Veda era homes that were built initially by wealthy Trustee university benefactors and also what was a developing middle class in the meditating community of the '80's, but revealed here also was the arrival of Vedic designed Sthapatya Ved architecture homes with the signature 'kalash' atop their roofs.
These near campus built meditator neighborhoods showing a historic mix of pre- and post- arrival of Sthapatya Veda home design.
Turning north out the back side of campus on "B" Street we pass through successive rings of meditator built housing, each representing different eras and economic tier.
Passing different age concentric housing developments shows a socioeconomic settlement of the meditating community.
A block further off campus now there are newer expansive condo buildings and large new condo housing developments for old meditators to come to in retirement.
It is interesting in driving the story when one remembers who built or bought their homes and when their houses were built. Whether homes were built before or after the introduction of registered "Maharishi Sthapatya Veda" architectural design principles, buildings that are visually noted with a kalash or stupa like ornament mounted atop.
Continuing, driving northward in to the near countryside to include a look at some of the large manor homes early built in the meditator settlement by older money coming at an earlier time along to Fairfield with the University. These estate homes were built before the feature of "Sthapatya Veda" design when in time people would be urged to "run from their homes as if they were on fire" and build anew guided by Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design.
Touring on further and eventually doubling back to Hwy 1 to see the former Telegroup and Books Are Fun buildings, massive 20,000 foot+ commercial 'Roo' business office buildings of an entrepreneurial era in the meditating community. Built in the late 1990s with Maharishi Sthaptya Veda design along Hwy 1.
Then turning West to visit the municipality of Maharishi Vedic City developed as a Sthapatya Veda designed community by a group of wealthy benefactors buying up large tracts of farm land.
Then driving further West through to the remains of a sprawling empty mobile home Pundit Campus (apparently with parts of the campus in visible abandonment).
Then driving over nearby to the separate monastic Mother Divine campus with modular buildings, housing that extends as mostly empty units way down a very long knoll in the countryside.
Driving back towards town passing meditator subdivisions of homes and acreages with mixes of large or modest homes and back to campus completes the shorter immediate countryside tour. But a wider tour would go much further out in to the County in different directions to include the several rural meditator subdivisions that were built out concentrically.
Then also add a drive inside Fairfield itself looking at the main street homes in town bought and refurbished by meditators in the early decades of settlement of meditators in Fairfield.
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Until recent years, one might have framed this entire story as a utopian feature—another chapter in the American tradition of transcendentalist spiritual communities. This being yet an iteration of perennial American transcendentalist spiritual practice settlement in communal grouping. Something very like the German Pietists having come to the Amana Colonies, or with the early Quaker settlement spreading in their meditative Friends Meeting houses across early America, or the Shaker meditative practice ashram-like villages of early America. Also Fruitlands and Brook Farm. Each of those stories thrived as practice communities in time and blended into their landscape in their own way, often to become artifact museums.
This TM communal narrative has unfolded decade by decade for 5 decades. As one drives through this artifact story now and one remembers names by generations of who all were settled there, you can see it—and feel it—through the architecture, the street names, and the oral narratives along the way. The telling is evolving as its demographics shift now and as communal memory is surfacing in archives like the recent "Conversations of the Hive" oral history project.
Conclusion:
Apparent now in driving the artifact anthropology tour the Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice movement attracted a cross section of socioeconomic participants.
Quite a lot of wealth, of old inter-generational family resource, and also so much invested individual human life capital as resource has come in to the Fairfield settlement as it is yet another example of a perennial American 'transcendentalist' spiritual practice community. In spiritual devotion, and social experimentation the meditating community in Fairfield, Iowa is yet a living case study—another expression of America’s enduring transcendental impulse. -Spring 2025
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https://www.miu.edu/campus-map
Paradox & Narrating some of the drive:
Notes:
Early on in the move of MIU to Fairfield, Iowa the community demarcated more simply as meditators and TM teachers meditating in groups all together.
With the advent of the Sidhis course there also came the meditator 'Sidha', TM teachers then with learning the sidhis practice designated as 'Governors' - then practicing 'sidhas' & 'Governors' meditated all together in the on-campus group meditation places and later the Dome meditations.
Whether it was in the old Parsons field house, the built 'shed', or when the Domes were built the group meditation was widely communal. Where everyone regardless of socioeconomic level or caste as faculty, staff, or 'town super radiance' came in together and sat together, until a carve out was made for Vedic City. The Vedic City groups have never been a large group but after the carve out we saw less of each other.
Turning in off Hwy 1 and seeing the Domes directly, the visitors each ask if they can go in the Domes? . “..well, no..”. “Can we meditate in the Domes?" Again, no it is not set up that way.
“How many do meditate in the Domes?"
Only some three or so hundred now between the two..
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A jaw-dropper within the tour progression seems always to occur out the backside of campus - on B Street at Earl. Kaplan’s old house. Often that is where a visitor first asks to take a photo, it comes as so over the top 'vedic' in the sequence.
This is also the point where the story of Earl’s success in the meditator business community is introduced and as told by Earl in the documentary film “David Wants To Fly” about his wealth. That becomes like a pre-amble to more checkered part of narrative to the tour just to come up.
Fragmentation in the ™ community
Fragmentation in the larger Dome meditation community came in with The Raja regime.
Late in Maharishi's life in promotion with the '100 millionaires' courses with Maharishi when the graduates came back as 'Rajas',
- They came back with their own 'special' program separating from the Dome community.
-- that the oligarch 'Raja' would stop coming to meditate with the Dome group was a point of diffusion in the realized community of the Dome meditations that once was. . And then came the Vedic City groups separating from the Domes also.